Blog Pepticsalve Painting Log

Have just started building a lizardman army as part of a 12-player escalation group. Every month we are hoping to add around 250 points worth of models. The idea is that everyone slowly grows their army over 10 months until we all have large, fully painted and tournament ready armies I was a month late joining so in theory I need to get 500 points worth of units painted by the end of this month!.

So, this month is all about core units for me. Saurus warriors and skink skirmishers - finished with a skink priest if I can get my three minimum core units painted this month!

Initial Saurus Warrior with spear unit (its not a legal size yet, more to come with full command later)

Test skink skirmisher with javellin (I'll be running multiple units of these guys, probably 10 to a unit)

I decided on a desert scrub land sort of base rather than full on green jungles - I figured lizards should be equally at home in deserts as they are in jungles :-D

I'm sort of going for "reasonable looking table top quality" that I can paint reasonably fast...

I find it a little odd that you seemingly using steel spear/javelin heads, but the metal is well applied and highlighted so it works.

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Thank-you! Yeh, I did consider doing their weapons 'properly' - I know in the fluff they have obsidian weapons, but in the end I decided to mix it up a little bit - obsidian shafts on the spears/javelins and metal speartips. I'm never one to follow the GW paint schemes 100% ;-)

And thanks for the bases - I'm of the opinion that a good looking base makes or breaks the model - yeh it might add 30 minutes to the build time per model, but I think its definitely worth the extra effort

Nice version of an otherwise traditional color theme for lizzies (blue). I'm quite fond of the green color on the head fin. Keep up the good work

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Thank-you! I did consider doing them green, but I was worried they'd look a bit more like orcs & goblins ;-) I enjoyed painting the head fin - skinks are really fun. What do you think about painting the patrol leader fins a different color - maybe red/orange - just to denote leadership over the other skinks?

Thanks! I haven't painted enough skinks for it to be a bunker yet ;-) But I plan on painting up at least 30 with javellin and shields, that way I can either run them as 3 skirmisher units, or a big bunker unit as I see fit...

Looks great. I have to be honest though. I would've loved it if you worked a bit more with complimentary colors. As of right now this is basically what you have done with your skink leader (blue - orange) , but this would've looked GREAT on all of them because of it makes their fin pop. The other 11, while looking great, are also kinda plain to look at and I fear that once they're on the board they'll just be a blue blob.

Again, it's not the actual paint job I'm criticizing here, it's more the lack of "pop".

I realize you might've tried to do something along the lines with the brown shields, but similar to the blue color it looks kinda plain (not sure if that's the proper word).

If you decided to do what I wrote you could always distinguish the leader by given him a different coloured shield or something a long those lines. Or maybe give him a bit war paint. Something sublet is always nice.

Looks great. I have to be honest though. I would've loved it if you worked a bit more with complimentary colors. As of right now this is basically what you have done with your skink leader (blue - orange) , but this would've looked GREAT on all of them because of it makes their fin pop. The other 11, while looking great, are also kinda plain to look at and I fear that once they're on the board they'll just be a blue blob.

Again, it's not the actual paint job I'm criticizing here, it's more the lack of "pop".

I realize you might've tried to do something along the lines with the brown shields, but similar to the blue color it looks kinda plain (not sure if that's the proper word).

If you decided to do what I wrote you could always distinguish the leader by given him a different coloured shield or something a long those lines. Or maybe give him a bit war paint. Something sublet is always nice.

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You are right, they are pretty 'plain' - but they do contrast quite nicely with the Saurus's I've painted - as they are much darker. I'm going to make the chameleon skinks more varied - in a way I wanted the skink core to be quite simple and plain - mostly because I plan on painting another 4-5 units of them and needed something reasonably quick and effective as a paint scheme. I actually do wish I'd painted them all with orange fins though - but I'd already committed to the green... Its all good - I think they look good enough to game with - and I can't really revisit units I've already done as I'm on a bit of a timetable (part of the escalation league, I need to paint new units rather than redoing old ones or I'll fall right behind...)

Ha! Yeh - lots of very late nights spent watching films and getting stuff painted. Somehow I manage to hold down a full time job AND study for a degree in my spare time! It helps only needing 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night though :-D

Also, I have to say it feels a bit like cheating painting the lizards. A skink when being batch painted only takes me about 45 minutes per model. And a saurus not much more than an hour... Just kind of get into that zone where you bash out the painting...

I suspect the temple guards are going to take longer - lots of detail on those models - plus I'll probably give them a bit more care and attention!